The prospect of female choreographers sharing a New York City Ballet program has always been just that — a prospect divorced from reality. But on Wednesday night, dances by Gianna Reisen, Caili Quan and Tiler Peck made up the company’s first all-female repertory program.
It was also the fashion gala, which felt a little shady as a frame for this neglected part of ballet history. But the all-female side of things wasn’t hammered too hard. Wendy Whelan, the company’s associate artistic director, referenced George Balanchine’s famous quote “Ballet is woman” in a speech before the program, adding, “We are excited to highlight women as the creative visionaries.”
The visionary part was a stretch, but it was a repertory evening that seemed to fall into place the usual City Ballet way: through the music — a piano concerto, a cello concerto and piano selections by Philip Glass. As the night dragged on, however, the program lost its zing. Two sets of speeches would have been bad enough, but there was also a film. Even at a gala, shouldn’t the dancing come first?
Along with a reprisal of Peck’s “Concerto for Two Pianos” and a company premiere of Reisen’s “Signs” — each engrossing in dance invention and musicality — the program presented a new work by Quan, her first for City Ballet. In “Beneath the Tides,” set to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Quan delivered a dance both choppy and oddly stagnant. This was a story ballet in search of a story.
Quan, a former member of the Philadelphia contemporary company BalletX, chose a concerto in which changes in tone seemingly come out of nowhere as the music shifts between bursts of emphatic joy and seething turbulence. Building momentum was hard.
The ballet did have a look. A curtain draped at the back of the stage transformed the scene into an intimate ballroom from another era. At the start, the dancers were spread like chess pieces: Gilbert Bolden III held Sara Mearns, who stretched her arms and legs in the shape of an X. Tiler Peck turned quietly, like a ballerina trapped in a music box. Jules Mabie and Aarón Sanz’s drifting bodies seemed lost in space.
The dancers’ costumes featured corsets — the designs were by Gilles Mendel of House of Gilles — attached to tights or flowing skirts that at times danced a ballet of their own. But even with slits the skirts were too long, and some of the tops, attached over one shoulder, were swan-like and fussy, veering dangerously close to mother of the bride.
True to its title, “Beneath the Tides” carried the sensation of being underwater. I wanted air. Group unison dances started forcefully — there was the churning sense of internal forces straining to get past the skin — and then fizzled out. Peck, who threw in a radiant turning sequence near the end, was mainly underused as she relied on her arms to convey a lost-in-slow-motion reverie. Mearns wafted along, trailing her arms as if reliving a painful memory. Was she a ghost? Bolden circled around her, lifting her into the air and setting her down again — and again — but their connection was indistinct, listless.
The evening’s book ends, fortunately, were more rewarding, starting with the company premiere of Reisen’s “Signs,” originally created for students of the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet. In this three-part ballet, set to music by Philip Glass, there is mystery and atmosphere. Its cast included three of its original dancers, Olivia Bell, Grace Scheffel and Mia Williams, now members of the corps de ballet.
Like those dancers, “Signs” has grown up. While the ballet filled the stage admirably, some of its details disappeared under Mark Stanley’s lighting; “Signs” is full of purposeful shadows, but the last section especially needed more brightening, more clarity.
The dancers, in costumes by Marc Happel — simple blue leotards and unitards like those worn in the student performance — inhabited Reisen’s landscape with youthful, magnetic fervor. Bell returned to her part as the ballet’s unofficial leader; the pas de deux in the second section featured Harrison Coll with Scheffel (in her original role). Their relationship, fraught and serene, was full of surprises, including a lift (that returned for the ensemble) in which Scheffel leaped onto the shoulder of a kneeling Coll and remained there as he rose to his feet.
In its early moments, dancers crossed the stage in a line, pausing to curve their spines or to float their hands to their faces, layering gestures in time with the music. They formed a circle, pausing to twist their torsos with arms raised overhead, their palms facing up. Choreographically, “Signs” doesn’t only sweep across the stage, it also has sharper accents — and a jazzy punch.
Bell was the ringleader from the start. When she breaks free for a haunting solo that sends her moving with a wild urgency, it’s as if the ballet has cracked through to a new world. She contorts her pliant form into shapes that zero in on her solitude. Pointing a finger, she follows an arm into the darkness. This is a ballet full of signs — hands over eyes, over mouths.
Whispered throughout are references to works by the company’s founding choreographer, George Balanchine, notably “Serenade” (1934). In one moment, Bell stands before four couples and softly twirls her pointer finger to signal supported promenade turns — a twist on a scene from “Serenade.” Throughout, Bell is something of a spirit straddling worlds, embodying qualities from the main characters of “Serenade” and giving them modern fire.
It was also gratifying to revisit Peck’s sophisticated and inventive “Concerto for Two Pianos.” A hit of the winter season, the ballet — set to Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra — is a dance of wit and splendor, freshened by sparkling musicality and crystalline flow. Its virtuosity is in the steps — especially when Roman Mejia, spectacular and sporty, is airborne — but it also luxuriates in quieter pockets of solitude. Peck doesn’t just throw steps in when she feels like it, she responds to the rush of the musical phrase. That was even more apparent this time around.
Mira Nadon and Chun Wai Chan have so much more authority and dancing strength since its premiere; the chemistry between India Bradley and Emma Von Enck continues to grow. This is a ballet that will live to be interpreted by new generations, but for now Peck is sticking with her original crew. It was good: She didn’t switch it up for the sake of the new.
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